Earthwatch Volunteer, Alex Cohen
Today was the last official dive for a team of individuals who came together from various and sundry environments around our increasingly small globe all to work on a project of documenting the values and health of the submerged military sites in Chuuk Lagoon.
From my own experience traveling solo and having to find diving buddies wherever I went, I can honestly say that I have never come across such a group of individuals as these that to a man or women I wouldn't trust my life with on a tough dive. While I've had many a buddy elsewhere without whom I'd have been far safer, you couldn't find a finer crew than these divers.
That attests certainly to the fact that your average diver probably wouldn't be going work diving while shacking up with a bunch of strangers for nearly two weeks in dorm style living all the while on a diet that varied about as much as the color does from place to place over the lunar surface, and let alone in in one of the most beautiful South Pacific Atolls on the planet.
But even with the Earthwatch expedition requirements as a strainer, I don't think you'd come across a crew such as this but a few times in your life.
During this expedition we conducted observations and took measurements that Charles Darwin himself couldn't hardly have fathomed. He was limited to sounding the bottom point by point with a bell-shaped lead called an "arming." Filled with tallow, that probe would pick up the shape of the coral it rested upon. On the deeper outer soundings it would bring up bits of sand in the event that was what it had found. With the data he obtained in this manner Darwin did a remarkable job of explaining the origins and mechanisms that created atolls such as the Chuuk Lagoon in his book 'Coral Reefs."
Dr. Jeffery instead had a mob of divers who descended upon the encrusted wrecks of the lagoon, measured and transected the vessels with their reef building invertebrates, algaes and fish.
On today's menu was the 'Dockboat' on the first dive and the 'Gunboat' on the second. We split the team and also dived an unnamed new wreck that was discovered by Tammy and Bill on the last Gunboat dive.
Today was the last official dive for a team of individuals who came together from various and sundry environments around our increasingly small globe all to work on a project of documenting the values and health of the submerged military sites in Chuuk Lagoon.
From my own experience traveling solo and having to find diving buddies wherever I went, I can honestly say that I have never come across such a group of individuals as these that to a man or women I wouldn't trust my life with on a tough dive. While I've had many a buddy elsewhere without whom I'd have been far safer, you couldn't find a finer crew than these divers.
That attests certainly to the fact that your average diver probably wouldn't be going work diving while shacking up with a bunch of strangers for nearly two weeks in dorm style living all the while on a diet that varied about as much as the color does from place to place over the lunar surface, and let alone in in one of the most beautiful South Pacific Atolls on the planet.
But even with the Earthwatch expedition requirements as a strainer, I don't think you'd come across a crew such as this but a few times in your life.
During this expedition we conducted observations and took measurements that Charles Darwin himself couldn't hardly have fathomed. He was limited to sounding the bottom point by point with a bell-shaped lead called an "arming." Filled with tallow, that probe would pick up the shape of the coral it rested upon. On the deeper outer soundings it would bring up bits of sand in the event that was what it had found. With the data he obtained in this manner Darwin did a remarkable job of explaining the origins and mechanisms that created atolls such as the Chuuk Lagoon in his book 'Coral Reefs."
Dr. Jeffery instead had a mob of divers who descended upon the encrusted wrecks of the lagoon, measured and transected the vessels with their reef building invertebrates, algaes and fish.
On today's menu was the 'Dockboat' on the first dive and the 'Gunboat' on the second. We split the team and also dived an unnamed new wreck that was discovered by Tammy and Bill on the last Gunboat dive.
Earthwatch Volunteer Ann Schile with the propellor from the new shipwreck discovery
(Photograph by Bill Jeffery)
Ian and crew managed to drill numerous holes, all of which were dutifully filled with underwater epoxy and tagged for the quandrant measurements of Mandy and her own team of bipedal pelagics.
Both dives were shallow enough that our dives times exceeded an hour for most divers and even Ed, the rapid breather of our bunch found himself with nearly 500 lbs of air left in his tank.
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